April 24th marks the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. I grew up in the 1950s in New York in the shadow of that tragedy. I was surrounded by survivors named Garabedian, Giragosian, Hagopian and others who always spoke fondly of “yergeer,” the country they were forced to abandon. My mother, Araxie, was from Dubneh, a village near Diyarbakir, and my father, Bedros, was from Nbishi, a village near Palu in what is now Eastern Turkey. Their memories, and those of others from the “old” country, filled my ears as did their tales of how they escaped death and got to America. I’d listened to their stories in Armenian, not understanding everything, but knowing for them, “yergeer” was a special place. It was home. Houshamadyan are precious memory books of a millennial-old civilization virtually lost but not forgotten. Recorded at the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).

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